Although 2015 was my second year attending the Association for Jewish Studies Conference, this was my first year presenting a paper as a member of a panel (last year I participated in a Graduate Student Lightening Round Session). In preparing to write my paper, I did some research about what distinguishes a successful conference presentation. This blog post from the American Historical Association was most helpful, as was advice from several colleagues. In addition, I turned to academia.edu to find conference papers posted by other scholars that I could use as a template.

As it turns out, very few scholars in history or Jewish Studies have uploaded their past conference papers to academia.edu. I was able to find only one example, from a former graduate student in Jewish Studies, and I relied on it as a model for how to approach my own paper. I was nonetheless left wishing that I had other examples against which to compare it. It is difficult to take the narrative and argument from a dissertation or book chapter and reduce it down to a coherent 15-20 minute bite, and I had hoped to see several different strategies for how to do it! In the end, I think I did a fine job considering that it was my first time turning a chapter into a shorter paper--the presentation seemed to go well. With the hope that it may benefit other graduate students or young scholars, I have posted my paper to my own academia.edu profile.